Berkeley CrimProf Charles Weisselberg has published Mourning Miranda on SSRN. The abstract: "The article presents new field research about police interrogation tactics and training and discusses that research in light of recent science literature and judicial decisions. I argue that the safeguards of Miranda v. Arizona have become ineffective, not because police are deliberately disobeying Miranda, but because officers have learned how to take advantage of rulings that have critically weakened Miranda's supposed protections.

Miranda's warnings and waivers were intended to afford custodial suspects an informed choice between speech and silence, and prevent involuntary statements. But there never was evidence to show that a system of warnings and waivers could actually protect the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Since Miranda was decided, the Supreme Court has encouraged police practices that have effectively gutted Miranda's safeguards. This paper presents police training materials that are not generally available to the
public. Training is a primary link between the Court's pronouncements and the way in which interrogations are actually conducted. Combined with the social science literature, these training resources demonstrate how the warning and waiver regime coheres with a sophisticated psychological approach to police interrogation, rather than operate apart from it, as the Court intended.

I also argue that Miranda is now detrimental to our criminal justice system. It is bad enough that Miranda's vaunted safeguards appear not to afford meaningful protection to suspects. But following Miranda's hollow ritual often forecloses a searching inquiry into the voluntariness of a statement. I am skeptical that
the courts may retool Miranda's procedures. I suggest other possibilities, including legislation." Full article here. [Jack Chin]

Joined the faculty in 1992. Clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit. Practiced law at Loeb and Loeb in Los
Angeles. Served as Dean of the University of Arizona School of Law,
taught at the University of Illinois School of Law and was a visiting
professor at the University of Geneva, University of Melbourne,
University of Puerto Rico, University of San Diego and the University
of Texas.

Author of Criminal Procedure in Practice, The Entrapment Defense, The Prosecution and Defense of Criminal Conspiracy Cases, and articles in the American Journal of Comparative Law and the Cornell, Georgetown, William and Mary, Florida, Southern California, and American Criminal law reviews. Co-author of Copyright and other Aspects of Law Pertaining to Literary, Musical and Artistic Works; Criminal Law: Cases and Materials; and Criminal Procedure: Cases and Materials.

Member of the American Bar Association Committees on the Rules
of Criminal Procedure and Evidence, International Criminal Law, and Law
School Curriculum. Chair and member of numerous committees within the
Association of American Law Schools. Co-reporter for the National Right
to Counsel Committee, 2004-2007.

Founder of the Literature and the Law Program at the Central Virginia Regional Jail. Frequently interviewed by the media (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times,
CBS, NPR, ABC) as an expert in criminal law and procedure. Recipient of
the Distiniguished Citizen of the Year Award, University of Arizona;
Volunteer of the Year Award, Williamsburg Big Brothers Mentoring
Program; the Walter L. Williams, Jr. Teaching Award; and nominated by
the College of William and Mary for several state and national
recognition awards.

From LATimes.com: A Sudanese prisoner with long ties to Osama bin Laden told the
war-crimes tribunal here Thursday that the Sept. 11 attacks dealt heavy
blows to U.S. security and exposed the "hypocrisy" behind American
claims that it stands for equality and justice.

Appearing at his arraignment, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Qosi refused to
accept legal representation for his trial before the Pentagon's
military commissions.

After a rambling statement, he announced that he would boycott further proceedings.

The bearded 47-year-old was the third Guantanamo defendant in the last
month to call the military tribunal illegitimate and refuse to
cooperate in his own defense.

"I leave in your hands the camel and its load for you to do whatever
you wish," he told Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, the judge preparing
for his trial on charges of conspiracy and material support for
terrorism.

Qosi also accused the U.S. military of discrimination against citizens
of the Third World, noting that two British detainees and an Australian
charged along with him four years ago have since been released under
pressure from those governments. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Widener Law is teaming up with area civic groups to present an
evening forum that showcases legal academics and practitioners in a
conversation on capital punishment, led by the woman who co-founded the
Cornell Death Penalty Project 15 years ago.

“Race and the death penalty: Is justice color blind?” is free and open to the public. It will be held Tuesday, April 15 at 7 p.m.
in the Ruby R. Vale Moot Courtroom on the Delaware campus of Widener
Law at 4601 Concord Pike, Wilmington. The program will be preceded by a
reception in the Barristers’ Club at 6 p.m.

Professor
Sheri Lynn Johnson of Cornell University Law School, an expert on the
interface of race and issues in criminal procedure, will speak first.
Johnson is assistant director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, an
initiative to foster empirical scholarship on the death penalty. She
helps students work with lawyers on death penalty cases.

Johnson
graduated from Yale Law School in 1979 and went to work in the criminal
appeals bureau of the New York Legal Aid Society. She joined the
Cornell faculty in 1981 and teaches constitutional and criminal law.
She supervises the school’s post-conviction litigation and capital
trial clinics. After Johnson speaks, the program will move to a panel
discussion featuring:

From newsli.com: On Friday, April 11th, the New York State Senate Democratic Task Force
on Criminal Justice Reform will host a public forum at Stony Brook
University on proposals to mandate electronic recording of custodial
police interrogations. This event will be the first of three forums
across the state to address proposed reforms to our criminal justice
system to prevent wrongful convictions of the innocent and convict the
guilty.

During these forums, Legislators and the public will hear
testimony from experts and exonerees concerning reform measures that
have been proposed in the New York State Legislature or by advocacy
groups to help prevent wrongful convictions. Friday’s forum will focus
on measures to address Mandatory Electronic Recording of Interrogations.

According to proponents of electronic recording of police
interrogations, this protocol would save time and money, create
undeniable evidence, resolve disputes involving allegations of police
misconduct, and verify whether confessions are voluntary—benefits that
might have contributed to the timely resolution of the 1990 People v.
Martin Tankleff case if they had been in place at the time.

The
confession obtained during Mr. Tankleff’s interrogation by police
regarding the murder of his parents was called into question, and after
17 years in prison, his conviction was unanimously overturned by the
New York State Appellate Court, 2nd Department in light of new evidence
of his innocence. Mr. Tankleff will be present and his representatives
are among those scheduled to testify. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

UNLV LawProf Rachel Anderson has published a very interesting draft on SSRN; though not specifically about criminal law, it will be of interest to many CrimProfs. The abstract: This article argues for reforms in the institution of student-run law reviews. Specifically, it calls for an increased understanding of the potential for bias in the article-selection process. Further it calls for institutional retraining to support the implementation of new criteria and standards and facilitate more accurate evaluation of scholarship.

The evaluation of legal scholarship is often based on assumptions stemming from socio-cultural understandings of law and society that do not address or incorporate the breadth of American society across lines of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Nor is it reasonable to expect them to do so. No one scholarly norm or standard can rigorously analyze the full range and extent of the breadth and depth of American society. This inherent inability demands a plurality of ideologies, methodologies, norms, and standards to facilitate and ensure a complex and rigorous intellectual debate. The reforms suggested in this article are intended to address the hurdles that law review editors must overcome to effectuate a more intellectually rigorous and informationally valuable article-selection process.

This article uses a hybrid methodology employing the tools and insights of both critical race theory and law and economics. It begins with issues of bias in legal scholarship raised in the two preceding decades by Richard Delgado, a leading critical race theorist, and Edward Rubin, a former Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Socio-Economics. Then, it follows in the tradition of law and economics scholars and Nobel Prize winner Garry Becker utilizing the tools of economic analysis in non-market contexts. Specifically, this article utilizes economic theories and concepts such as market failure, informational asymmetry, switching costs, and network effects to develop a deeper understanding of institutional bias on law reviews. Finally, it employs scholarship on rhetoric and critical reading skills to identify opportunities for reform. [Jack Chin]

From latimes.com: t happened again at a Taco Bell. The old way of thinking, the criminal voice, wouldn't shut up inside the head of Ken Layton.

"Yeah,
take out that punk kid, beat the crap out of him, show that pimply
faced idiot he ain't nothin' and you're still Folsom Kenny Layton."

He was standing in line at the fast-food joint, behind an overwhelmed
woman with an unruly child. She was complaining about her order, and
the kid behind the counter kept putting her down. "He was rude," Layton
said. "Sarcastic."

Layton,
64, had been out of prison for 20 years. And yet the old thinking was
back, a twisted moral code that he wrote in childhood, refined over
decades behind bars and enforced throughout early adulthood, no matter
who got hurt.

For many ex-cons, this is the kind of moment that can precede a crime
and, ultimately, a return to prison. A 2002 Justice Department study
that tracked prisoners released in 15 states found two-thirds of them
were rearrested within three years for a felony or serious misdemeanor.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a 2006
report, tracked inmates for two years after their release and found a
recidivism rate of 38% after one year. After two years, 51% of released
California prisoners were back behind bars.

In
his case, it was still there, decades after his last crime. But as he
drove down the street with his wife, Layton adjusted. Within a few
blocks, he'd found a way to stifle Folsom Kenny.

Layton's
ability to defuse his anger is a rare skill for an ex-con, but it
doesn't have to be. Experts think helping criminals understand how
their thought processes are connected to the crimes they commit is more
than just a touchy-feely exercise. It can reduce recidivism. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

From ap.com: University of Oklahoma CrimProf Randall Coyne discusses the case of a deputy prison warden's wife who disappeared with a convicted
murderer in 1994 and spent a decade on the run with him has been
charged with helping him escape.

Three years after Bobbi Parker
and Randolph Dial were found, a prosecutor said Tuesday he had charged
Parker with assisting in Dial's escape from the Oklahoma State
Reformatory in Granite. Now 45, she could face up to 10 years in prison
if convicted.

Dial died in prison at age 62 last year. After his
2005 capture, he said he kidnapped Parker at knifepoint and forced her
to live with him all those years. But a court affidavit alleges that
the two were romantically involved prior to the escape, and that Parker
helped Dial escape by hiding him in her car.

At the time of
Dial's escape, Parker left behind her husband, Randy, who was deputy
warden at the Granite prison at the time, and two daughters, then ages
8 and 10. She was reunited with them after she was found in April 2005
in east Texas, where she and Dial had been raising chickens.

CrimProf Coyne said Dial's death and the long delay in prosecuting the case could work to Parker's benefit.

"She
could argue that her due process rights are harmed because the
prosecutor sat on the charges for so long," Coyne said. "She could
argue documents or witnesses helpful to her may have disappeared."

Lawyers challenging lethal injection on
behalf of death row inmates have frequently argued that lethal
injection protocols do not comport with standard practices for the
euthanasia of animals. This article studies state laws governing animal
euthanasia and concludes that many more states than have previously
been recognized ban the use of paralyzing agents in animal euthanasia.
In fact, 97.6% of lethal injection executions in this country have
taken place in states that have banned, for use in animal euthanasia,
the same drugs that are used in those states during executions.

Moreover, a study of the legislative history of state euthanasia laws
reveals that the concerns raised about paralyzing drugs in the animal
euthanasia context are identical in many ways to the concerns that
lawyers for death row inmates are currently raising about the use of
those drugs in the lethal injection executions of human beings.

This
article takes an in depth look at animal euthanasia and its
relationship to lethal injection by examining in Part I the history and
origins of the paralyzing drugs that veterinarians and animal welfare
experts refuse to allow in animal euthanasia; in Part II the standards
of professional conduct for veterinary and animal shelter
professionals; in Part III, the state laws and regulations governing
animal euthanasia; and finally in Part IV, the legislative history that
led to the enactment of the various states' animal euthanasia laws and
regulations.

From NPR.com: California's potential $16 billion budget
shortfall has led state officials to an unusual source for tax revenue
— medical marijuana storefronts. In a state where it's legal to buy
prescription pot, those shops generate millions of dollars each year.
But there's just one problem — buying and selling marijuana is still a
federal crime.

Richard Lee, owner of a coffee shop and marijuana
dispensary in Oakland, says he's proud of the more than $200,000 a year
he pays in sales tax. His store sells marijuana buds in one-eighth
ounce bags.

"We have one medium grade on our menu, that's $30 an
eighth plus tax," Lee says. "And three high grades, that's $40 an
eighth plus tax, so it comes to $44 with tax, sales tax included."

Medical
marijuana advocates estimate that the aggregate annual sales tax
revenue that's paid by the approximately 400 dispensaries in California
is $100 million. Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe
Access, says the state actually makes it easy for pot venders to do
business without revealing their product by issuing generic "sellers
permits." Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

William Neal "Billy" Moore, former Georgia death row inmate, will discuss capital punishment on Tuesday, April 8, from noon to 12:50 p.m., at the Knight Law Center, 1515 Agate Street, Room 142, in Eugene.

Moore spent 16 years on Georgia’s death row and is one of the few Americans to be released from prison after admitting to a capital crime. Members of the victim’s family, Mother Theresa and Jesse Jackson supported his release. [Mark Godsey]

The many dangers to the health and safety of those involved in
prostitution are well documented but does our legal system provide
adequate resources to help these vulnerable people? Join the University
of Maryland's School of Law Students Supporting the Women's Law Center
[SSWLC] as they present an engaging panel discussion, From the Streets
to the Courts: Examining the Relationship between Prostitution and the
Legal System.

The dialogue, moderated by Baltimore Sun reporter
Jonathan Bor, will explore how Maryland's legal system serves
individuals involved in prostitution and consider possible improvements
to the current system. Expert panelists include Judge Charlotte Cooksey
of the Prostitution Reform Court; Sidney Ford, Executive Director of
You Are Never Alone [YANA]; and a YANA friend. [Mark Godsey]